She learned from Juan to make a bed for her babies and stuffed animals on the floor at night before bed. Juan will do this from time to time with several of his stuffed animals. He'll line them up on the floor, cover them with a blanket (or sometimes line several of them to nurse on his stuffed shark), and then read them a story. He'll even ask them questions about the story as he reads, and turn it always so they can see the pictures. Then he'll kiss them all goodnight. So, Mary Lu started doing all this too. She also reads like crazy. She doesn't remember so many of the words as Juan does, but she improvises the story from the pictures. She even uses voices. I'm always impressed that she keeps up such a steady clip, like she doesn't even have to think of the story or what her characters will say; it just comes to her. I'll have to try to get a video of them both. Juan also will read books to Mary Lu now, for the most part he remembers books word for word (seriously he has an amazing memory and needs to hear a book only a couple times through before he knows it), but he is also beginning to read quite a bit so he does that too. Actually, I can't believe I haven't blogged about that yet, but he amazes us every day with his reading and writing. He is really into Atlases right now, for example, and when I am having trouble finding a country that I'm reading about on the page (you know, like finding Albania on a page about Asia), he'll often find it first and point it out to me.
Oh, that reminds me of one more funny thing that Mary Lu does. When we are having trouble understanding what she says, first she slows down and speaks to us very loudly and clearly, and then if we still can't get it, she'll try to spell it for us. For example, if she's saying, "I want to go outside." and we don't understand she'll say, "Starts with an 'o' and an 'm'" Of course the letters don't correspond, you know, but the concept cracks me up.
Ok, one more story. Juan and Mary Lu both make their own way into our bed at some time during the night. Juan is such a heavy sleeper that he is not really conscious at all even in transit. He has told me before that he doesn't even remember walking into our room at night and I believe him. He comes in, mumbles something usually about how I'm warm, snuggles in next to me, and is asleep instantly. Mary Lu, on the other hand, is quite orderly about the whole thing often, and will sometimes even talk to me for a few minutes before going back to sleep. Just like a little chat in the middle of the night. The other night she came in, pad, padding down the hall, walked over to Juan's side of the bed and efficiently put her water on the night stand, then came over to her side of the bed, climbed in next to me and went nicely to sleep. This next part is a vomit story, so skip to the next paragraph if you don't want to hear it. We all had the flu in quick succession a couple weeks ago and their sleep differences were in humorous contrast then as well. Of course, the vomiting part for all of us came at night (thankfully only on the same night for Juan and I). It was one of the flus where you're up vomiting every hour or so all night. So, every time Mary Lu woke up, there were pajamas to be changed, the sheets to change a couple time, bedding to be cleaned, you know, all that. She would calmly sit and hold the bowl in between vomiting, she would wait for me to leave the room and come back with clean pajamas, a clean towel, whatever, and then when it was all done we would lie down and try to sleep and repeat in an hour. She was totally calm and awake and made the whole thing run so smoothly. Juan slept soundly in the same bed with us through this whole night (he and I weren't sick that night). I'd turn on the lights, change the bed around him, he just slept away, eventually she and I relocated upstairs but not until early morning). Anyway, on Juan's night, he would wake up and vomit and be instantly back asleep (as is his way), so much so that it was a bit of a circus act to change his pajamas and clean the bed around him because if I didn't physically hold his body up, he would literally have plopped back down in his own vomit and snored away, I swear. I actually caught him split second before his head hit the defiled pillow one time and he had just been talking to me a second before. I was simultaneously hysterical and grossed out. Ok, that's the end of the vomit story.
Other than that, we're just really busy with Spring stuff and all SO excited to be outside again. We've got all kinds of seeds started in our kitchen and a coat closet full of berries (blueberries, marionberries (thanks to mom), raspberries, and strawberries) waiting for the nights to warm up a bit so we can plant. John is building lots, currently working on: Mary Lu's dresser, toy boxes, and two living room bookshelves. I'm an ever-tired and grumpy pregnant lady and I'm trying really hard not to complain as much this time. We are at a serious loss for boy names (no, we still don't know what we're having, but we have ample girl names). For anyone who still checks the blog and I haven't already made this request to, please feel free to pass along any boy name suggestions as we'd love to hear them!
